1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a translation machine which can generate a natural translated sentence. More particularly, the invention relates to the translation machine which is capable of changing an interface with a user depending on the user's setting.
2. Description of the Related Arts
The inventors of the present invention know that there have been traditionally proposed translation machines. Of those machines, a typical translation machine mainly includes a CPU, a translation module, and storage units for storing a main dictionary, a user dictionary, grammatical rules and tree-structure converting rules. In operation, the typical translation machine takes the steps of entering a source language input from a keyboard into a translation module under the control of the CPU and translating the source language into a target language in the translation module using the main and user dictionaries and the grammatical and tree-structure converting rules in respective storage units.
When the translation machine is in operation for translating English into Japanese, for example, a user often needs to register a new English word uniquely created in the user dictionary. For registering a new word, the word has to be input together with the information of Title of the English Word, Part of Speech of the English Word, Inflection (Conjugation) of the English Word, Japanese Equivalent of the English Word, Part of Speech of the Japanese Equivalent and Inflection (Conjugation) of the Japanese Equivalent.
As mentioned above, for generating a more natural translation sentence, it is necessary to register in the user dictionary not only the English word and its Japanese equivalent but also each part of speech and inflection of the English word and the Japanese equivalent.
When of registering a new English word in the user dictionary, a use is required to input the inflection (conjugation) of an equivalent Japanese word to the English word. Therefore the user has to have a knowledge about Japanese grammar. It brings about a disadvantage that users except those having the knowledge about the Japanese grammar cannot easily and efficiently create the user dictionary.
Further, the foregoing translation machine has another disadvantage. When the translation machine is in operation for translating English into Japanese, for example, at first, the translation machine divides the input English sentence into words and obtains the grammatical information about each word and its Japanese equivalent by consulting the dictionaries stored in the memory. As mentioned above, the typical translation machine has the user dictionary in which a user can register new words in addition to the basic and special dictionaries. The user dictionary contains not only the English word itself but also the information about the English word such as a title, a part of speech, its Japanese equivalent, and a part of speech of the Japanese equivalent.
Assume that the foregoing translation machine translates a sentence including the proper-noun phrase "Sharp Information Systems Laboratories" into Japanese. It may analyze the proper-noun phrase word by word without treating it as one phrase. Or, it may merely translate the part of the phase using the words registered in the dictionaries. In any event, if the proper-noun phase is not treated as one phrase in operation of the translation, the resulting translated sentence becomes unclear.
To overcome the disadvantage, such a proper-noun phrase is registered as a block of words in the user dictionary. However, disadvantageously, the Japanese equivalent to each word cannot be uniquely specified.
Such a specific proper-noun phrase may be registered as one block in the user dictionary so that its Japanese equivalent is the same phrase. In this case, the proper-noun phrase is left intact in the Japanese translated sentence, because it is analyzed as one block. In registering the long proper-noun phrase title like "Sharp Information Systems Laboratories", however, an operator has a large burden, because the operator has to make sure the long phrase title, character by character, for avoiding erroneous registration.
In turn, a further disadvantage of the foregoing normal translation machine will be described hereinafter. The normal translation machine is so arranged that it performs a translation without considering how much a user knows about the source language and the target language or the translation machine itself. However, a user having little knowledge about the languages or skill about the operation of the translation machine cannot make full use of the functions of the translation machine.